Vaulting Ambition: the BRM V16

Vaulting Ambition: the BRM V16

‘Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself…’
Shakespeare, Macbeth

British technology has been so dominant in motor sport for so long now that it is hard for many to imagine the time before World War II when British motor racing was an insular, gentlemanly affair (‘The right crowd and no crowding’ was the slogan at the Brooklands track) with virtually no impact on the international scene. True, the Bentley sports cars had been dominant at Le Mans in the late twenties, but by 1939 that was a fading memory. In single-seater racing, the ERAs (English Racing Automobiles) had given quite a good account of themselves during the thirties, but that was in the Voiturette Class, what would now be called Formula 2. No British car had won a Grand Prix race since 1924.

The driving force behind ERA had been Raymond Mays, one of Britain’s best-known and most successful drivers – but not at the highest level, as there was no British Grand Prix car for him to drive. As the war broke out and all motor competition ceased for the duration Mays, fired by patriotic fervour, decided to redress that situation. He would build a world-beating Grand Prix car to boost British prestige the way the all-conquering Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union teams had boosted Germany’s prestige in the mid- and late thirties.

As the dark years of the war dragged on, Mays and designer Peter Berthon, Mays’ long-time associate (and rumoured lover – Mays was gay and Berthon apparently bisexual) who had worked with him at ERA, mulled their ideas over. ERA, a fairly small-scale venture housed in an outbuilding in the grounds of May’s family home in Bourne, Lincolnshire, had been funded by one wealthy patron, but another level of support altogether would be needed for an assault on Grand Prix racing. Raymond Mays conceived the idea of a national racing car project, with financial backing and components supplied by companies throughout the British motor industry. The project would be called, appropriately, British Racing Motors.

An impossible dream? Mays didn’t think so, and when the end of the war was in sight he applied his considerable personal charm and powers of persuasion to making it happen. His canvassing of over a hundred firms in the then-thriving industry produced sufficient response for the project to go ahead. A works was set up in another, larger building in the grounds at Bourne. The British Motor Racing Research Trust, run by a committee of the major financial backers, was set up to handle the formidable administrative task of co-ordinating the finance and supplies from the multiple participating firms – over 350 of them eventually.

As if this organisational nightmare were not enough to deal with, the designs Berthon had been working on for the car were wildly ambitious.

The Formula 1 regulations due to begin in 1947 specified an engine capacity limit of 4.5 litres, or 1.5 litres if the engine was supercharged. A supercharger is a pump driven mechanically by the engine (as opposed to a turbocharger, which is driven by the exhaust gases) which forces the fuel/air mixture into the cylinders at increased pressure, thereby squeezing more in and producing extra power – enough extra for the formula to equate a supercharged engine with a normal one three times its size. Supercharged cars had dominated Grand Prix racing for many years before the war, and so it seemed natural to choose the option of a small highly stressed engine rather than a big, lazier – and thus potentially more reliable – one. But (even if there is such a thing) this was to be no ordinary supercharged engine.

1.5 litres, or 1500cc, is about the size of the engine in an average-sized family car, but whereas such engines normally have four cylinders, that wasn’t enough for Berthon’s ambitions. Neither were six, eight or even twelve cylinders. He chose to use sixteen (count them) cylinders arranged in a 135-degree V. Auto-Union had used a V16 in the thirties, but that was a much bigger engine. The cylinders in the BRM engine were about the size of egg-cups. There was a fine disregard for compromise in the pursuit of power about the whole design. It was probably the most complicated engine ever put in a Grand Prix car, with over 36,000 parts.

Effectively, Mays and Berthon were planning to build a car, high-tech enough to have given pause to an established car manufacturer with full factory facilities, in a shed in Mays’ back garden. Okay, The Maltings was rather more than a shed, and the garden was quite extensive grounds, but one can’t help suspecting a certain degree of over-optimism here, and the distinct possibility of trouble in store. And trouble was what they got. Plenty of it, and most of it not anticipated or allowed for.

The design work was complete by 1947, but the actual building of the car proceeded with agonising slowness. Many of the engineering firms who had agreed to donate components (not surprisingly) put profits before patriotism and gave low priority to their work for BRM. There were endless delays in the delivery of parts, and the engine wasn’t fired up until June 1949. And then the troubles really started.

The engine fulfilled all hopes as far as power was concerned (its eventual output remained unmatched by any other Formula 1 engine until the turbo era thirty years later), but it was chronically unreliable. The small team were in over their heads with that complex engine, working their socks off for little result. They were perpetually playing catch-up, solving one problem only for another to rear its head. To go into detail would be tedious: suffice it to say that just about every part broke at one time or another – sometimes with catastrophic results. The car wasn’t ready for Mays to try out until December 1949.

Raymond Mays was a gentleman, and in those days the Classics were considered an essential part of a gentleman’s education. One wonders if the name of Sisyphus ever crossed his mind.

In the meantime, the popular media (encouraged, it has to be said, by Mays and other leading lights of the project) had been trumpeting the BRM since before it had even run as the wonder car that was going to show the world what Britain could do, and the pressure was on for it to live up to the hype. It had been hoped to give the car its debut at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on 13 May 1950, but it could still not be relied on to last the race distance, and the BRM mechanics had to work through the night even to get one car in a fit state for Mays to drive a few demonstration laps. The debut was postponed until the International Trophy, a non-championship Formula 1 race also at Silverstone, on 26 August.

‘Disappointment’ is hardly an adequate word for what followed. It was a fiasco, a PR disaster of epic proportions.

After three more months of work and more last-minute all-night sessions only one car was ready to be flown down to Silverstone on the morning of race day. Entrusted to Raymond Sommer, one of France’s best and most experienced drivers, it was too late for practice and had to start from the back of the grid. And when the flag fell and Sommer let in the clutch the car lurched forward a few inches and stopped dead. A drive-shaft had broken. It was a sad reward for three years of unremitting hard work and more money than had ever before been spent on a racing car.

Public opinion is unforgiving. The cheers of the crowd changed to boos as the car was wheeled away. Pennies were thrown into the cockpit. From being Britain’s over-confident hope of motor racing glory the BRM became a ‘Blooming (or ‘Bloody’) Rotten Motor.’ Only a month later the car redeemed itself at Goodwood, winning both short races it was entered for, but the damage had been done. BRM’s reputation never really recovered.

For 1951 two new improved cars were built, shorter and lighter, and both were entered for the British Grand Prix, again at Silverstone. Again the cars missed practice and had to start from the back of the grid, but this time both cars not only started but finished, albeit in fifth and seventh places. This was more creditable than it appears, in view of the fact that both drivers, Reg Parnell and Peter Walker, were suffering from extreme discomfort but bravely battled on anyway. Incredibly, the exhaust pipes had been routed inside the bodywork, through the cockpit. The drivers had to have burns dressings applied during pit stops to enable them to carry on.

To say that the problem hadn’t become apparent before because the cars had never run a full Grand Prix distance has to be regarded as specious. Surely anyone with half a brain should have been able to foresee that such an arrangement would roast the drivers. Somehow it seems typical of the whole project.

The only other races entered that year were the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where the cars did put in an appearance but were withdrawn before the race with gearbox problems, and the Goodwood Trophy, where the team failed to turn up at all.

And then Raymond Mays shot his own project in the foot.

At the end of the 1951 season Alfa-Romeo, who had dominated Grand Prix racing ever since it had resumed after the war, announced that they would be withdrawing. Their car, the immortal but now ageing Type 158 ‘Alfetta,’ had reached the limit of its development potential, and Alfa had no answer to the rising power of Ferrari. With Maserati lacking a competitive car, this left Ferrari with no credible opposition. BRM were asked if they would be competing in the 1952 season, and responded by entering two cars for the curtain-raiser, a non-championship race at Turin.

But Alfa-Romeo’s withdrawal had left the reigning World Champion, Juan Manuel Fangio, without a drive, and Mays was anxious to secure his services for BRM. So anxious that when Fangio was invited to come to England to test the car and replied that he would be available on the same weekend as the Turin race, Mays, with astounding short-sightedness, decided that a test-drive by Fangio, leading to the possibility of him driving for the team, was more important than a minor Grand Prix, and withdrew the Turin entry. The race was a processional Ferrari walk-over.

The consequences were predictable. Race organisers all over Europe concluded that BRM were not to be relied on. It was decided to run all Grands Prix until the forthcoming new Formula 1 started in 1954 to the rules of Formula 2, in which there was plenty of support and variety. Mays’ decision effectively killed the formula for which his car had been designed, leaving it high and dry with only the occasional minor race to compete in. It was a sad end for the car on which such high hopes had rested. Ironically, by the 1953 season it was finally race-worthy, achieving several podium places in such few races it was still eligible for, but it was too little, too late.

Fangio later said that he would have been quite happy to come on an alternative date. When he did get to drive the car he relished the challenges it set, saying, ‘No car has given me a greater thrill to drive,’ but Stirling Moss was less enthusiastic, dismissing it as ‘Without doubt the worst car I ever drove.’

For even when the car was running properly, it was tricky and demanding to drive. The supercharger, designed and made by Rolls-Royce’s aero-engine division, was of a type normally used in aeroplanes – indeed, it was based on the supercharger in the Merlin engine. But aeroplanes spend long periods cruising at constant speeds, and while this type of supercharger worked fine in a Spitfire it was less suitable for a racing car, which must slow down and speed up to meet the demands of the track. The BRM’s supercharger produced little boost at low engine speeds, and then when the driver kept his foot down and the revs rose, the power would come in with ferocious suddenness at about 8,000 rpm. Coping with this required considerable finesse and skill (with the narrow tyres of the day, the car was quite capable of losing traction and spinning its wheels at speeds of well over 100 mph on a dry track), not to mention constant work on the gear lever to try and keep the revs over that 8,000 figure.

Four BRM V16s survive. One is in the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu. Two were in the Donington Grand Prix Collection and have been in private storage since the museum closed in 2018. The fourth was owned for some time by Pink Floyd drummer and petrolhead Nick Mason (‘I once made the mistake of working out that the cost per yard travelled was approximately the same as laying the finest Wilton carpet.’), and is now in the possession of former Formula 1 head honcho Bernie Ecclestone.

Recently there has been an astonishing sequel to the BRM V16 story. Following the discovery in the BRM archives of three chassis numbers allocated to cars that were never built due to the change of rules in 1952, a project was conceived quite as ambitious as the original one: to create those three cars – from scratch, albeit with access to all the working drawings. The initiative came from close to home, from the Owen family, descendants of Sir Alfred Owen, one of the original backers, whose company had bought the team in 1953 after the trust had decided it had had enough. The cars would be built by Hall and Hall, historic racing car restorers, who happen to be based at Bourne.

There have been other historic racing car replicas, recreations, or continuations, as they have variously been called, but nothing as challenging as this. The imagination boggles at the thought of the work (and cost) involved in recreating that complex engine, but the first new BRM V16 was delivered in 2021 to John Owen, son of Sir Alfred. It has since put in regular appearances at the Goodwood Revival and other historic events.

A second car was ordered by Richard Mille, a watchmaker and BRM enthusiast. Since his products carry a six or seven figure price tag, it would seem that he is well able to afford the astronomical price that must be involved.

Even though an eerie silence seems to have descended over the project since, so that I have been unable to discover if Mille’s car was ever finished, or if the projected third car was even started, it still prompts an intriguing question.

What is it about this car that inspires the sort of devotion to make something like this happen? Why does a car conceived in a pipe-dream and developed in a shambles, a car with so little success to its name, retain the charisma it undoubtedly possesses for some people, myself included? Perhaps it’s the sheer audacity of the concept – and heroic failures, if nothing else, do often make a good story. Maybe it’s the exquisite, watch-like workmanship, something that strikes everyone who sees the car in the metal. Or the awesome power of that engine. But a lot of it surely has to do with the astounding noise the car makes.

The V16 BRM’s exhaust note is unlike that of any other car engine. Even at lower revs it has an aggressive bark, a sharp edge a bit like the sound of ripping cloth multiplied a thousand-fold. On full song it rises to an eldritch banshee howl. It is also quite outrageously loud, far louder than the noise any engine displacing a modest 1500cc has any right to make. There is a recording of a BRM being driven round the Donington circuit, in which you can hear every gear-change, every burst of acceleration, all round the circuit. And when the car howls at speed past the recording point (probably in the pits) the noise is quite spine-tingling.

It is a sound that makes people who have not heard it before blink and shake their heads in astonishment (or wince and cover their ears…). To a petrolhead, it is music to the ears. Once heard, it is never mistaken for anything else – or forgotten. You can hear it here.